(c) When an employee is removed from an official or fully-excepted position he may only bid on a bulletined position. When an official or fuVy-excepted position is abolished or when a temporary assignment to such position ceases, the employee may exercise displacement rights in accordance with the provisions of this Rule 22.

five (25) consecutive work days with pay will be granted to each employe

covered by this Agreement who renders compensated service on not less

than one hundred (100) days during the preceding calendar year and who

has twenty five (25) or more years of continuous service and who, during

such period of continuous service, renders compensated service on not less

than one hundred (100) days ...."

The Organization maintains that the subject at issue is not the number of days' pay to which Claimant would be entitled under Carrier's policy, because through the correspondence on the property, the Carrier acknowledged that, had Claimant exercised her seniority to obtain an assigned Agreement-covered position, she would have been entitled to receive pay for 25 days (20 vacation and five personal) in 1993. Rather, the subject at issue is whether Claimant's declining to obtain an assigned position precludes her maintenance of an Agreement-covered employment relationship with Carrier. The Organization contends that Claimant's correct employment status is that of an unassigned employee, with rights to receive vacation pay in that status afforded her by the Agreement.

The Organization notes that on April 20, 1993, Claimant issued Carrier proper notification that she had elected to be in an unassigned status, and that she desired to waive her recall rights to such positions. Because Carrier expressed no opposition to that notification, it tacitly acknowledged Claimant's right to elect to be on unassigned status. In addition, by letters in May and June of 1993, Carrier advised Claimant that she was a successful applicant for the payment offered some clerical employees via the Agreement-provided CETC separation allowance. Carrier subsequently rescinded the payment because Claimant refused to abandon her live Title VII action against Carrier as a condition of receiving the payment. [That matter is the subject of another claim under the Agreement.[

Finally the Organization maintains that it has been Carrier's practice to provide payment for earned unused vacation to those unassigned employees who had returned

to Agreement-covered status from official positions. Thus, the Organization contends that Carrier's past practice, as well as its current policy, entitle Claimant to receipt of payment for all earned and unused vacation.

It is the position of the Carrier that the instant claim is without merit. At the outset, the Carrier urges that the Organization cited no portion of the Rules which have been specifically violated by the Carrier. Moreover, the Organization cites an alleged Carrier violation of its own policy, but has not demonstrated how those alleged violations occurred. The Carrier insists that the mere filing of a grievance or claim is not a basis upon which a claim may be sustained (Third Division Award 19833).

The Carrier also points out that neither Rule 2, Rule 10, nor Rule 22 have been shown to have been violated. For example, Claimant had every right to return to a fully covered position in the Philadelphia area, but chose not to. Finally, the Carrier notes that Appendix "E" cited in the claim is a synopsis of the National Nonoperating Vacation Agreement- In 1992, the Claimant was on a management position and received her management vacation during the calendar year of 1992. For the Claimant to have been covered under the Nonoperating Vacation Agreement in 1993, she would have had to perform service under this Agreement, and she did not. The only link Claimant had with respect to any Agreement Rule during her tenure as a management employee was that she retained her clerical seniority.

After careful review of the entire record before the Board, we find no basis upon which to sustain the instant claim. Claimant served as a management employee until March of 1993. Accordingly, she was entitled to management vacation, but not entitled to vacation provided by the Agreement. There is no question that, had she bid into an assigned, Agreement-covered position upon her release from management, she would then have become covered by the vacation provisions; and, had she performed the required 100 days' service, she would have been eligible for the claimed vacation and personal days. For reasons not clear on this record, Claimant declined to do so, and elected instead to remain in unassigned status. Thus, the Board is compelled to decline her claim.

AWARD